Voter ID process altered again

At start of court hearing on constitutionality of new law, state officials announce revisions in response to state Supreme Court decision.

September 26, 2012|By Peter Hall, Of The Morning Call

HARRISBURG — Pennsylvania has again revised the process for voters to obtain the identification needed to cast a ballot.

The announcement came Tuesday at the start of a second hearing on the constitutionality of Pennsylvania's voter ID law, when a state judge said there is a possibility he will enter an order restricting or altogether banning enforcement of the requirement.

Under the revised process:

•Registered voters will no longer have to show that they cannot qualify for a driver's license or PennDOT photo ID card to obtain a voter identification card from the Pennsylvania Department of State.

•The new process eliminates the need for voters to make two trips to a PennDOT office so state workers can verify that they are registered to vote and confirm their identity.

• A voter may obtain a Department of State ID by providing his or her name, date of birth and Social Security number and address. No proof of address is required.

•PennDOT will produce an ID card even if it cannot verify that a person is registered to vote. The ID card will be held by the Department of State to be issued when a voter registration application is processed.

Attorney Alfred Putnam, who represents Gov. Tom Corbett and Secretary of State Carol Aichele, said the revisions are a response to a state Supreme Court decision calling for more open access to the credentials.

"We think we're now complying with what the Supreme Court thinks the law says," Putnam said after court concluded Tuesday.

During the hearing, an attorney for a dozen Pennsylvania residents who have challenged the ID requirement questioned state elections and transportation officials on their implementation of the law.

David Gersch, who represents the challengers, said he hopes to bolster evidence that the voter ID law is unconstitutional as it is being applied and will argue that it should be suspended for the upcoming election and blocked entirely after a full trial.

Asked whether the revisions unveiled Tuesday will remedy problems with the law, he said that while they make identification cards more accessible, the state Legislature intended Pennsylvanians to have seven months to obtain them, not five weeks.

The Supreme Court last week ordered Commonwealth Court Judge Robert Simpson to reconsider his August decision refusing to issue an injunction against enforcement of the voter identification requirement.

Opponents of the law argued that although the requirement to show a photo ID was itself not unconstitutional, enforcing the law could disenfranchise voters if they don't have opportunities to get the required ID.

The 4-2 majority, in a strongly worded opinion, said "the most judicious remedy, in such a circumstance, is the entry of a preliminary injunction" until problems with access to the required credentials are resolved.

The justices ordered Simpson to hear additional evidence on how the law has been applied since the first two-week trial on the law's constitutionality.

Under questioning by Gersch, Deputy Transportation Secretary Kurt Myers said people who tried to obtain photo IDs previously had to sign an affidavit that they were unable to get a driver's license or PennDOT photo ID.

That generally required two trips to a PennDOT office, Myers said. Efforts by PennDOT clerks to confirm that a person was registered to vote by calling a state elections office hotline were sometimes met with busy signals and lengthy waits, Myers conceded.

But, Myers said, that was part of the learning process to deploy a new system for issuing identification cards.

Asked why the process was not simplified earlier, Myers replied that PennDOT was merely a conduit for issuing voter ID cards. Any discussion about the accessibility of acceptable voter identification would have taken place among Department of State officials.

Myers said PennDOT has issued about 9,500 driver's licenses or photo IDs to people who need them for voting and an additional 1,350 Department of State ID cards. He said there was no analysis to determine whether PennDOT's license centers would be able to handle an influx of additional customers because of the voter ID requirement.

Myers said the number of customers in the department's license centers has been slightly higher than in recent years, but there was no indication that they would see an influx of thousands of additional customers.

"The data just doesn't support that there are hundreds of thousands of people who need IDs," he said.

Gersch also questioned Shannon Royer, a deputy secretary of state who works on election issues, about the state's $5 million effort to educate voters on the new requirement through billboards and print, radio and television ads.

The campaign, Gersch noted, makes no mention of the Department of State's voter-only ID. Royer said the ads direct viewers to the Department of State website, where there have been more than 200,000 hits..